Always one comes back to that word "young." It is the key to an understanding of the Anzac—youth with its enthusiasms, rashnesses, faults, shynesses; youth, raw, if you will, but of good breed and high intentions.
Australasian life leads to a certain hardness of outlook. Life is prized, of course, but its loss—either of one's own or of the other fellow's—is not regarded with any superstitious horror. Certainly it is not regarded as the greatest evil. To go out with a mate and to come back without him and under the slightest suspicion of not having taken the full share of risk and hardship would be counted greater. Living close up to Nature (who can be very savage with tortures of fire and thirst and flood), the back-country Anzac—who sets the national type—must learn to be wary and enduring and sternly true to the duties of mateship. The Bedouin of tradition suggests the Anzac in his ideals of mateship and of stoicism. The Anzac follows the same desert school of chivalry in his love for his horse and dog and his hospitality to the stranger within his gates. He will share his last water with the animal he is fond of; and in the back-country the lonely huts of the boundary riders are left open to any chance caller, with a notice, perhaps, as to where to find the food stores, and to "put the treacle back where the ants cannot get to it." It is, of course, a point of honour not to take except in case of need.
An English padre who put in two years in the "Back of Beyond" of Australia as a "Bush Brother" confesses that his first impression was that the Anzac of the Bush was cruel and pagan. His last impression was that the Anzac was generally as fine a Christian as any heaven for human beings would want. An incident of this parson's "conversion" (he related) was the entry into a far-back town of a band of five men carrying another on a stretcher. The six were opal miners with a little claim far out in the desert. One had been very badly mauled in an explosion. The others stopped their profitable work at once and set themselves to carry him in to the nearest township with a hospital The distance was forty-five miles. On the road some of the party almost perished of thirst, but the wounded man had his drink always, and always the bandages on his crushed leg were kept moist in the fierce heat of the sun. One of the men was asked how they had managed to make this sacrifice.
"It was better to use the water that way than to hear the poor blighter moan."
Many a night we speculated to what degree the different Dominion types will approximate as a result of this war. Certainly when the Dominion and British troops were in contact tidal currents of knowledge flowed to and fro which left both the gainers. Points which had been particular property became common: regarding economy in the use of the water-bottle, the art of making a bed in a shell-hole, informal methods of acquiring horses, the best tracks towards the soft side of Ordnance, the true dignity of salutes, sniping as a sport, the unpatriotism of recklessness, and other matters. Slang was pooled and trench language much enriched. In all things the essential kinship of the British race was disclosed.
We agree that after the war, the British Empire will have more of a general likeness. Colonial ideas will have penetrated more strongly into the Mother Country. British ideas will have permeated the Colonial restlessness and impatience. What an ideal race the British could be with a constant coming and going from the Mother's home to the children's houses; an exchange of good grey wisdom with eager enthusiasm, the equable spirit of green and cloudy England mingling with the ardency of the Dominions.
Finally a Dominion officer sums up:—
"I do not think an Empire managed on the old British lines could survive another great shock. It is charming to be so equable and good-tempered and to love your enemy as yourself and to do good to those who hate you. But it brings a nation too close to the fate which overcame the Peruvians under the Incas (they were a charmingly equable and good-tempered and confiding race). Yet those who hope for an Empire managed on Canadian lines, or on Australian lines, leave me cold. I want good wheat crops and cathedrals, the best of the new and of the old spirit. And just as the sole real advantages of being rich are that one can be honest and generous, there would be no use at all in being a great Empire and yet not feeling strong enough to 'play the game' fairly and chivalrously. I hate hearing the talk—which is the swing back from the excess of British tolerance—of a cold-blooded and merciless efficiency as the ideal of national life. Better to perish than to be a German Empire trampling on the faces of women and babes to the throne of power."